Strategy question
How would you approach building a new line of business for Facebook Echo?
- Meta
- Strategy
- Hard
Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.
Start a mock interview on this question · Mock interview from a job description
What this question tests
Strategic thinking: spotting an adjacent opportunity and reasoning about whether the parent company has a real advantage there.
How to approach it
- Clarify what Facebook Echo is meant to be in this scenario, for example a smart speaker or audio hub, and confirm with the interviewer.
- Assess the market: who buys smart speakers today and what unmet need remains.
- Identify Meta's advantage: the social graph, Messenger, and existing hardware experience from Portal.
- Propose an angle that leans on that advantage, such as social audio calling as the wedge use case.
- Lay out the go to market plan: pilot with existing Portal owners before a broad launch.
- Define success with adoption and retention metrics, and name the key risk, such as privacy concerns.
What a strong answer includes
- Grounds the idea in Meta's real assets, the social graph and Messenger, rather than copying a generic Alexa competitor.
- Picks a narrow wedge, social calling, instead of trying to out feature the entire smart speaker market.
- Assumes an illustrative launch metric, such as 1 million active devices in year one, and treats it as a hypothesis to test.
- Names the top risk honestly: consumer trust in a device with an always listening microphone from Meta.
Common mistakes
- Pitches a me too speaker with no unique Meta advantage.
- Skips the trust and privacy risk that is central to this specific company.
Likely follow-up questions
- Why would this succeed where Portal did not?
- How would you price it against Amazon Echo and Google Home?
- What would make you kill this line of business a year in?
More strategy questions
- How would you decide between showing more ads on the Facebook Newsfeed vs showing a "People you may know" recommendation widget?Meta · Strategy · Hard
- How would you decide whether to build a feature or fix a bug (assuming both take the same engineering effort)?Meta · Strategy · Easy
- An engineer suggests showing suggested Buy/Sell Groups on users' newsfeed instead of the People You May Know section. How do you determine if that is a good idea or not?Meta · Strategy · Medium
- Why should Facebook enter the dating market and how would you execute it?Meta · Strategy · Hard
- What should Airbnb's strategy be during the COVID-19 pandemic?Google · Strategy · Hard
- Imagine you're a PM at Amazon and you're working on a partnership with Facebook that has the goal of leveraging FB's friend network to drive Amazon sales. Walk through the lifecycle for building this integration/partnership.Amazon · Strategy · Hard
More questions from Meta
Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 4: Discovery and strategy for AI products
- Chapter 9: Prove it paid off: outcomes, economics, and pricing
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop